Guild Wars 2

The stupid thing is, nobody ever called for a duo-queue as far as I can remember. People were asking for solo and team to be split.

When your only options for a vote are things that nobody even wanted in the first place, you can’t really blame the voters for the outcome.

Cal Cohen.3527:

kin korn karn.9023:

What’s the point of the 90sec dc countdown when the entire team loses rating anyway?

Could gw2 pvp in 2017 be any more depressing?

I took a look at this match and the longest disconnect was a player who disconnected about 70 seconds before the match ended.

Regardless of what your data says, he was out of the match for 90+ seconds (it was about 100), and the countdown timer reflected that. If the timer counts down to 0 from 90, and your data shows 70, there’s clearly something screwy with how it’s determining how long a player is actually absent from a match.

In fairness, we definitely would have lost anyway. But this is not the first time I’ve watched the dc timer count down to 0 and still lost rating.

Cos he didn’t have you blocked, he just had “Invisible” active. You could’ve blown up his mailbox, but yeah, whispers don’t go through.

Next time someone harasses you continuously, right click their name in the chat box and click “Block.”

You already can’t message a blocked player.

But the scummiest of players often harass, block before the other guy can get a word in, then soon after that unblock briefly to harass some more, then re-block. (Of course rule #1 would mostly prevent this.)

[edited for clarity]

What’s the point of the 90sec dc countdown when the entire team loses rating anyway?

Could gw2 pvp in 2017 be any more depressing?

Long overdue.

If this had happened a few days ago, I’d be 5W 1L on placements instead of 5-3. Even had TWO players DC in a close match for around 100 seconds each, and still counted as a loss.

Power shatter mesmer has been around a long time. The build doesn’t work well against decent players, which is why you very rarely see it above low- to mid-tier. It’s used specifically for farming noobs.

Weird. Your sig says you play necro, but when I play necro and people try to res downed, it just ends up with more enemies downed.

Haleydawn.3764:

All of the old PvP dailies were able to be earned exploitably (yes I’m using that word!) in custom arenas, by match-manipulation rank farmers. I’m glad they’ve been changed to require you to actually PvP now.

I’d prefer Anet to change the Tournament daily. Purely because of it’s time windows and the fact you need 4 other players to sign up for one.

Calling them match manipulators, though technically true, is a little intense considering there are no real stakes in those matches and custom rooms are basically set up for manipulation. I’m with you, though. I like the new dailies aside from Tournament. Class dailies were the worst. On numerous occasions, I played ranked matches with people who admitted they were bad at the class but deal with it cos dailies.

Auramancer is an incredibly dull build to play, so I understand if you don’t want to use it; but the fact is, it’s the only viable ele build. Play any other ele build, and you require your team to carry you, without exception. You might as well be telling them you are playing without armor.

If you have thin skin and can’t handle the absolutely reasonable vitriol directed at you, I suggest playing a different class or taking your bad ele build to Unranked.

HamHat.5201:

matchmaking is a joke this season. Not sure what changes Anet made, but seriously laughable. I was in gold and got teammates who were obviously in bronze, didn’t know rotations, or their class.

There are plenty bad players ranked above bronze. I did my placements with what seemed to be mostly platinum from last season (at least based on their self-praise), and it’s like most of them just now stepped into pvp for the backpack, like no clue when to rotate, defend, engage, etc. Throwing leads, ignoring suggestions, ignoring targets. Most players are just bad, and MMR doesn’t work accurately to determine which division people belong in cos MM is pretty much a crapshoot and has been all along.

What potato are you playing on? I use a 5yo Lenovo Ideapad most of the time and don’t have significant lag issues on EC.

Support ele is still very strong. If you play support ele and can’t win matches, try something easier.

Any other ele puts your team at a disadvantage. If you play non-support ele, switch to any build that is appropriate for the meta.

If you’re losing matches with p/p thief, it’s because you’re playing a garbage p/p thief. Switch to something better.

Ithilwen.1529:

A better approach would be to play relying on your own strength and ability.

What a septic, pointless response, and just completely wrong. He’s not asking to be carried; he’s trying to find people to team up with, and you’d be smart to do the same in this “clownfiesta.”

iTz Joshz.3961:

I still don’t get why he’d take CoP over PF though? Losing AoE burn burst + AoE cleanse and condi reduction for some unneeded cleanse and a few boons seems like a bad trade to me but maybe there’s something I’m missing.

I sort of see the point with the cover conditions (could also take fallibility to cover) however bulwark is a huge buff, and an extra cripple and pure dps increase doesn’t seem to be?

You can build 10+ stacks of burning easy without Purging Flames. The extra sustain/cleanse from CoP doesn’t hurt in the absence of Focus 5 and Bulwark, and it’s also a stun break, which is good for both offense and defense. I only played this build one match, but I didn’t really miss Purging Flames at all, though I think swapping the skills out depending on the matchup would be reasonable enough.

Since this build doesn’t use Doom Sigil, the extra cover condi (not to mention snare) from Zealot’s Aggression is welcome. It also synergizes with Permeating Wrath, making the cripple AOE (in addition to the burning). You sacrifice a little bit of sustain, but it seemed to be worth it from what I could tell.

Try the build, it’s pretty brutal.

Entenkommando.5208:

marceline.8163:

Kuya.6495:

Only issue i have is that the buffs in coliseum seem a bit underpowered to me.

They are totally rubbish.

I actually find the auto stomp to be pretty strong.

It’s ridiculously strong. A smart thief +1ing efficiently with auto stomp often results in a full wipe before it expires.

You had a bad team comp and lost. Imagine that.

Drakz.7051:

I have had matches where I battled few people but broke through doors and killed the lord and won the match yet I doubt I got top stats but we would have lost if I hadn’t xD

Getting top stat doesn’t really mean you’ve helped win the match or carried all the time.

Absolutely. Yesterday I had exactly this match you describe, and with 0 top stats. Like I said before, people are taking the screenshot way too seriously. My real point in this thread is that I can’t believe how stupid and random pvp is now. Most players are just braindead. It’s rarely about which team is better anymore; it’s almost always about which team is worse.

Which sounds like the same thing, but it’s not. The glass isn’t half-full or half-empty, it’s kittening bone-dry.

alccode.1297:

…Good idea about setting firm rules for when to stop playing, kin korn karn. I will adopt those and see how it goes.

I woudn’t say it’s foolproof, but it’s been much better. I have an unfortunate personality trait that makes me want to keep playing when I’m losing just as much as when I’m winning. It’s the reason I swore off any kind of gambling many years ago. Perhaps I should try taking my new rules to the casinos one day.

Unfortunately, it seems most days I’m on the better side of matchmaking, I don’t have as much time to play. Today I was mostly free, and I started off losing 2. I threw caution to the wind and played a bit more, lost a couple more games and finally decided to just catch up on Homeland instead. I think I ended up 1-4 for the day. (Not counting a 4v5 due to dc, but counting a 4v5 due to player afking at around 220-300.) Just the kinds of matches where there’s nothing an individual could have done to swing them. Shoulda stuck to the system.

A similar thing happened to me. In under a week, I dropped from an unremarkable but respectable ~65% winrate in Gold t3 down to like 1400 rating with constant 3-8 more losses than wins. Not all losing streaks all the time, but wins were scattered and I could not get out of the rut.

Didn’t change til I said yeah kitten this game and made a few rules for myself.
(1) If I lose the first two matches in a session, I stop playing.
(2) At any point in a session, if I lose 3 of the last 5 matches, I stop playing.
(3) I don’t play anymore during times when match quality suffers the most due to low player population. (Due to my time zone I sometimes bend this rule cos the only time I can play on weekdays is like 2am and later in NA. But rules 1 and 2 keep this in check a bit.)

It seems to have helped. I’m back over 50% wins now (albeit barely), and so far back up to ~1550 rating.

You might want to consider something similar to stop you from continuing to play when you’re losing. Just turn the game off for several hours and study a foreign language or re-watch Rick & Morty or whatever.

https://i.imgur.com/pbekoIi.gif

I think you guys are taking the screenshot more seriously than I’d intended. I can kinda see why, but I meant it as an accompaniment to the post rather than the meat of it. I’d started the post recounting tales of various plebeians I’ve dealt with recently, e.g. Warrior and engi approach a node, both dead within 20 seconds at the hands of a single engi. Or, warrior and ele chase a single necro around outside his base for a couple minutes while enemy mesmer runs right past and takes the node they were 2v1ing the necro for in the first place.

But I realized these stories are probably more amusing to me than they’d be to others, so I reconsidered and went with a recent screenshot.

I’m well aware that it’s easy to get top stats on druid. Like I said in the OP, I generally don’t put too much stock in top stats, and I expect that as druid I should probably get 3-4 most matches. But then when I play thief, I feel just fine getting the usual 0-2.

I’m also aware that the best players are carrying each and every match. Admittedly, I’m probably not a great player. I’d say I’m good at best, but more likely merely above average. Some of you might like to argue for below average, but I’m not interested in having that conversation. I’m more concerned with season 6’s, um… I guess we’re calling it a clownfiesta these days? (Can’t say I totally understand that term, but it sounds fun.)

As for the comment that I didn’t manage to get that last top stat, thanks for the chuckle. You honestly had me going there for a second.

jihm.2315:

i usually top 2-3 stats and i loose all the time i dont know what is going on

Getting a couple top stats is effortless with the right classes and says very little about your actual impact on the match. Getting basically ALL of them, however… shows your teammates were really dragging kitten

Should get double rating gain for such a clear carry. I generally don’t put too much stock in top stats, but this is my experience with s06. I usually either have to do practically everything for my team or eat a loss. Makes it pretty unlikely that I’ll manage to climb out of gold this season.

It’s unbelievable how unskilled the typical pvper is these days.

1v1 mode in this game would be 90% determined by which builds are used. There’s good reason they haven’t implemented this idea, and I wouldn’t hold out any hope for it.

I really wish I could’ve experienced pvp league a few years ago because conceptually I think what Anet is doing should be good for pvp, but it seems like it’s too little too late. At any point, when I look at the last 10 games played, there’s rarely more than one or two that resulted in 500-350 or closer. I know, I know, people have been complaining about blowouts for a while. But it seems like the overall skill level was much higher in the past, and matchmaking doesn’t appear to deal well with so many inept players. My god, the things I’ve seen this season. Very few people have any idea what they’re trying to accomplish in a match. It makes it really hard most of the time for an individual to have any meaningful impact. The ineptitude of the players and the matchmaking that, it would seem, consistently predetermines the winning team are sucking all the fun out of pvp league.

I wonder if Anet has any clue how terrible the pvp experience as a whole is, or if they simply don’t have any idea what to do about it.

Guys, this thread is 2 months old and was beating a dead horse even then.

Axl.8924:

…i think its a bug of some sort with the queu system.I have in the past tried to do guild pvp match and constantly get kicked from the queue repeatedly and unable to join, and many many times been kicked from queue after a while, so i don’t think its people but some sort of issue with the match making system.

Quite often lately I’ve been getting the warhorn queue pop sound, but it shows “queue abandoned” instead of letting me confirm ready. (No dishonor or anything, as there was no timeout. I just have to re-enter queue.)

Doesn’t seem unlikely that this could be the cause a lot of the time, instead of players afking (or trolling) in just about every queue.

DrDivine.5378:

Who cares about dueling rooms? Winning matches isn’t about having the best dueling build. If you’re 1v1ing as a necro, that’s your problem. The AOE damage that power necro drops is unmatched, which is wasted on 1v1s, even if you can win them all.

The keyword here is accessible, necro was not accessible for the average player. I’m not going to talk about rev much because we all kinda know it hasn’t been good,

Chrono, DH, Warrior, Druid, even Tempest can handle themselves if the situation goes bad. They can all be used in team fights, but at the same time if needed they can push for another node if needed. Thief gets away with this because of it’s superior mobility.

You’re trying to tell me that good profession design, as in for the average player who wants to pick up a necromancer and play this game, is forced to play a DPS role only with no disengage, no 1v1 potential or independence and must be properly supported by the team every single time otherwise it fails? I don’t buy it. That is not good design, you shouldn’t be a blob that just does AOE damage when other professions can fill similar roles while doing more.

If you want to argue that all professions should be balanced around low-skilled players, I’m sure there are people here who would love to engage you in that discussion, but I’m not your guy. All I’m saying is that necro is strong AF and has been all along. People don’t target necro first merely because it’s a more vulnerable profession. It’s mainly cos necro will tear you to pieces if left unchecked.

zealex.9410:

Tomiyou.3790:

zealex.9410:

i always thought the meta in season 5 was really good why would they need to change much for it to be considered a good balance patch?

Because there is also the off meta stuff. And they barely even touched that. That’s why every is disappointed by the patch.

whats with the off season? i mean they can reduce the off season duration what else?

By “off meta stuff,” he means non-meta builds, not offseason.
(But it’s unclear which non-meta builds he thinks need balancing.)

DrDivine.5378:

kin korn karn.9023:

DrDivine.5378:

Even the best power necro was just kinda meh…

You’re joking, right? Power Necro was probably the best offensive build last season for team fights, as long as good support was present.

That can be said for any profession, necro was not self sufficient and that’s a huge problem. Almost no 1v1 presence, you literally have to hold a necro’s hand the whole match and that will only get you so far. As in, if the person who is supposed to be supporting you makes a mistake, you’re going down with them. You can’t run and push for another node because you will face horrible matchups against warriors, druids, DHs, mesmers, those by themselves are awful.

You go into tpvp or a dueling room, you wouldn’t find many necros. The class is literally on life support and desperately needed some independence and not just a niche role lol

Who cares about dueling rooms? Winning matches isn’t about having the best dueling build. If you’re 1v1ing as a necro, that’s your problem. The AOE damage that power necro drops is unmatched, which is wasted on 1v1s, even if you can win them all.

DrDivine.5378:

Even the best power necro was just kinda meh…

You’re joking, right? Power Necro was probably the best offensive build last season for team fights, as long as good support was present.

PhilipKsL.9167:

Which reward chest?

The loot chests from reward tracks. Remember most of them are affected by MF, so you might wanna hoard them til Call of the Mists comes back. (Or open them in SW after completing some events.)

I have like 15 unused ascended chests in my bank from reward track loot, but that’s from thousands of chests opened, so it’s not exactly reliable.

DrDivine.5378:

…and necro just kinda sits there…

I take it you somehow never encountered a decent power necro, cos they’re a friggin monster in team fights.

Blackmoon.6837:

I did try once, just not hard enough. Watched Helseth’s vid on keybinds etc. Although I didn’t find it as useful as I thought.

I’ll certainly consider keybinds, but not until I get platinum this season. The season is almost up anyways, don’t feel I have enough time to learn it.

To that end, recommendations for keybinds? Specifically for Mes, guard and necro?

It’s been a while since I watched Helseth’s video you mentioned, but the title (a guide to settings and keybinds) is a bit misleading, because IIRC it isn’t really a guide as much as it is a long-winded, meandering explanation of why you should re-bind, with a few considerations from his perspective/playstyle sprinkled in. There are some good tips though, so I’d suggest watching it again before settling on the binds you wanna use. What stands out in my memory of the video is moving WASD/QWES to ESDF/WERD in order to open up three extra, easily reachable keys for binding. And if you play mesmer a lot, his “about face / Phase Retreat” trick is very useful.

But the most important thing is to rebind 6-0; just doing that as a minimum will increase your game drastically. Keep in mind that to bind them, you’ll want to rebind some other things, e.g interact which is taking up very valuable space (F key).

These are my major keybinds:

I use QWES for movement, QE are strafe not turn. Turn (mostly useless) rebound to Shift+A and Shift+D just for the hell of it. Interact rebound to Shift+F, auto-run rebound to Shift+R. 67890 bound to RFADZ. Added binds for nearest target [C ], previous enemy [Shift+Tab], look behind [X].

I’m only revealing this for illustrative purposes. I’m overdue for a keybind overhaul, myself, so keep in mind that my binds are not ideal by any means. But honestly anything is better than clicking. If you can get a gaming mouse too, that might help, but personally I find them awkward and rarely use the buttons on mine, so I normally just go back to using my simple 5-button trackball.

If you click your skills, you’re willfully playing handicapped merely because you’re too lazy to rebind. Seriously, rebind that kitten. Takes like a week max to get the hang of it.

If you want better builds, just play cookie cutter and tweak it like most everyone else. There’s no honor in playing an “original” build that is sub-optimal. Again, you’re willfully playing handicapped, and for what?

Don’t mean to be too harsh, but this is just basics. Fix these two things then come back with some proper gameplay vids, hopefully at platinum division.

Crinn.7864:

Wait people still use the term “cyber” in 2017?

I know this is from 2016, but indulge me.

fishball.7204:

Yeah I had to grind my way up from bottom of gold to plat over like 60 games. What a waste of time and I’m worried on the last few days some people are just going to 9-1/10-0 snipe the top 250 positions like that :/

No5 NA is 9-1

I’m currently 3W 5L on placements, keep getting the same types of idiots, 2- and 3- thief teams almost every match, nobody swaps, teammates eat AOE spam and wipe in an instant, poor rotations goes without saying. I’ve never considered myself an elite player, but placement this season is gonna be a joke. Probably sit this season out.

Stiofan.6720:

Anet you guys seriously give the reddit/forum whiners way too much power over you.

QFT

Shadowstep.6049:

BeLZedaR.4790:

A Thief that complains rev is still op.
Give me a break.
You don’t even have to face retrib rev anymore.

The fact is you can’t beat the matchup you counter which means you’re bad, not that rev is op.

You realize thief is not only class in this game?

I think he just chimed in to flame OP because OP mentions thief in his signature.

Aeolus.3615:

Exciton.8942:

1v1 a condition chrono?
DH destroys them if you know how to play. Can survive easily as long as you spam traps, symbols and blocks since they cleave out clones in less than half a second.

Know how to play DH… lol, sadly its the only dumb way we have to play with that class.. besides poop traps… useless.
A decent mesmer will not fall for trap poop spam…

He’s talking about traps for killing clones, which is valid since shatter is a good portion of chrono’s offense.

From OP’s post history, looks like he favors warrior, which to be fair is not in a great place for 1v1ing a meta chrono at equal skill level.

Sorin Noroku.5342:

As someone who’s played the condi Mesmer, the damage is high, the stealth is annoying, but defensive and healing abilities is low. Most of the defense I use is either stealth, confusion with clones, and stealing boons. Overall, not terribly hard to beat. We lived through season 2, we can survive condi mes

Whatever build you’re playing, I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about. Meta chrono has no stealth but loads of block / evade / invuln. But most classes have heavy sustain and good dps now, so I don’t see a problem with chrono specifically. Probably a L2P issue tbh.

Chrono had significant nerfs in the two balance patches before this one, so I wouldn’t say it hasn’t been touched. Try baiting the block spam without giving him a block, makes a huge difference.

Similar to others, the other day I started playing late , only enough stacks of favor to get 2 fragments. Thought I could make up the 3rd fragment later. Played twice more, no fragments even though 12+ stacks of favor. Now I got 2 useless buggers in my inventory.

Blude.6812:

“One Mad King’s Chest Key Fragment for every 4 stacks of Mad King’s Favor upon completing the event, with a max of three per day.”

Yes, I read the wiki too. What’s your point?

I logged in today, went to bank, got knocked down and realized Mad King Says had started. Played. Got 2 key fragments. Fine, I’ll get the last one later, I thought. Played 2 more times. Neither one yielded any fragments, even though I did have enough stacks of favor and got the usual “event completed” popup (just no fragment reward).

Is this intentional, that only your first play in the day will yield any key fragments?

sephiroth.4217:

Ele still has powerful DPS output. Just need to kite more, time dodges and hope someone doesn’t sneeze on you by accident.

Wow, that’s impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever received even half that much damage in a single match.

Tbh, jumping through walls is a bit obscene.

Saiyan.1704:

kin korn karn.9023:

Has thief ever been in a bad place? I’ll take a good thief over just about anything else vs PUGs.

I think everyone would agree that a good +1 is better than a PUG. There’s not a bad class in Ranked pvp.

Premade Meta though, that’s a debate. I don’t think Thieves are a viable 5th pick but that’s just me. Compared to Rev/Ranger/Mesmer Necro+Engi/Ele, DH/War, Thief is in a bad spot unless it’s random pug stomping yoloQ like the picture shown in OP.

What I meant to say is, generally in the queue I’d rather have a good thief on my side than a good anything else. By PUGs I just meant random Qers that aren’t partied up. Of course vs organized team is a different story, but isn’t it always. I don’t think a ton of us here play tourneys, so a good thief is almost always an asset cos their potential to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses is so high.

Has thief ever been in a bad place? I’ll take a good thief over just about anything else vs PUGs. Gets a little more iffy vs full organized teams, but those are few and far between in the queue.

And when I say a good thief, I don’t mean those evade spam condi jokers.